


I'll still be holding your hand (olaf was right)

by beepbedeep



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/F, abandonment issues???, and does NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT, just! lying in bed! thinking about life!! pretty girl is RIGHT THEREEEE, lin LOVES KYA SO MUCH, whoops!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:08:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26485432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beepbedeep/pseuds/beepbedeep
Summary: If she were a stronger person she might resent Kya for her seemingly effortless ability to convince Lin to join her with a teasing tilt of her head. But Lin is not particularly strong when it comes to her childhood friends, when it comes to Kya, and right now, curled on her side with a few wisps of the other girl’s hair tickling her nose, she really wouldn’t rather be anywhere else.
Relationships: Lin Beifong/Kya II
Comments: 11
Kudos: 123





	I'll still be holding your hand (olaf was right)

In. Out. Up. Down. Kya’s stomach rises and falls so rhythmically that Lin hasn’t been able to tear her eyes away from the quiet movement since Kya’s eyes closed. The light filtering in through the open windows is always brighter on Air Temple Island than it is in the city, even in the middle of the night like this, but Lin isn’t good enough at lying to herself to pretend she took her free time off from the Academy to enjoy the marginally more intense glow of the moon. The night sky is irrelevant to her most of the time, (unless she’s estimating visibility on carefully studied dark streets for class) but right now the shine is skating along Kya’s hair (still impossibly long) and maybe it’s a waterbender-moon thing, maybe this happens to everyone at the poles, but Lin thinks it might just be a Kya thing because it’s _mesmerizing_. She can’t help contrasting this with her dorm back in the city, small and grey and utterly functional, where she could have spent this weekend training and volunteering to do paperwork at the station. 

If Lin were a stronger person, at her core, if she was able to summon just a little of her mom’s unwavering fortitude, she might have stayed back at the Acadamy for this (unplanned but unsurprising) Aunt-Katara-can’t-go-a-month-without-dragging-everyone-together-for-family-time adventure. (her mom’s been grumbling about these kinds of get togethers for as long as Lin can remember, but she smiles more around her old friends than anywhere else, especially when Uncle Sokka starts telling stories.) If she were a stronger person she might resent Kya for her seemingly effortless ability to convince Lin to come with a teasing tilt of her head. But Lin is not particularly strong when it comes to her childhood friends, when it comes to _Kya_ , and right now, curled on her side with a few wisps of the other girl’s hair tickling her nose, she really wouldn’t rather be anywhere else. 

The only problem is, _Lin can’t sleep like this_. She’s not sure when it shifted, when the blood roaring in her head and stomach churning became too much. Sometime between nights just after Su was born, when their house was full of people, and Bumi, Tenzin, Kya, and Izumi, all as young as Lin, would fall asleep propped up next to each other on couches and tucked into the same beds, and now, when Lin can’t manage to close her eyes because Kya’s _right there_ and Lin missed her a _lot more_ than anticipated. 

(When she thinks about her childhood, Lin always smiles, at least to herself. _Her_ family’s messy, the Lin-Su-Toph combination playing out poorly in every arena, but Su was a lot more fun around Tenzin, Aunt Katara’s the best hugger Lin has ever met – not that she hugs very many people – and she still remembers the year when Aunt Suki decided to teach everyone under the age of eleven hand-to-hand combat, how Bumi’s face lit up when he realized he was _really good at something_ , how Uncle Zuko would heat his palms to keep them all warm the November that two-year-old-Su decided jackets were unnecessary and boring. She’s lucky, the older she gets the more Lin realizes it, to grow up in an often complicated, but always familiar group of people – who loved her and took care of her just as much as their own kids.) 

Really, Kya’s to blame for this shift, because _she gets prettier every year_ and at twenty-five, twenty-three-year-old-Lin isn’t sure how much longer she can handle this. It’s already weird (has been for a while, ever since Kya could walk into a room and pull something in Lin’s chest, since her laugh could tumble through Lin’s legs.) 

Lin wonders why she dated Tenzin sometimes, how she convinced herself that their easy friendship (and clearly irreconcilable differences) would make them good at anything more. On good days she wonders how lonely she really must have been at seventeen, on bad days she can’t ignore that she kissed him for the first time a few days after Kya left (to _travel_ – something Lin has never fully understood the urge for) and how, through half closed eyes, Tenzin’s cheekbones almost look like his sister’s, how their voices trail up in the same way, how they use the same soap.

Lin is not a victim in her own life, she takes all the control she can get, achieves and achieves and achieves, but more often than she’d like to admit, she’ll mark her life by people leaving, by distance – first Kya, then Su, then her mom, and finally Tenzin. And she doesn’t need them, Lin Beifong doesn’t _need anyone_ , but Su left a few things behind when she moved out that Lin keeps in a box in her closet, a box she takes out on holidays and birthdays and early mornings when she can’t shake the way Su used to crash around the kitchen, making them both breakfast and leaving a tornado’s worth of desertion in her wake. And, every day, she makes sure to shut her eyes and take off her shoes, to _feel_ her way through the world like her mom taught her, to search for the heartbeats of people she loves eminently from their feet. (Seeing like this has always felt like their secret, a thing Toph didn’t teach anyone other than her daughters.) 

And maybe it’s this same nostalgia that pulls Lin towards Kya, that makes her wish she could earthbend through ice, seismically sense Kya’s movements at the South Pole, that she could wrap her arms around Kya’s waist and cling to her, like they did in school, but it still feels _different_. 

She thinks about Su when she cleans the bathroom, (at least living alone means she only has one person’s worth of hair to clean out of the shower drain) and looks at holiday displays. She thinks about Tenzin on bright, blustery days, whenever she sees children running after each other with barely controlled glee. She thinks about her mom when she’s training, when she bends, when she whips out coils of metal like additional limbs, chanting Toph’s instructions in her head for years longer than she needs to. 

She thinks about Kya the rest of the time. 

Sunny mornings are Kya’s, so are choppy waves and sweet smells wafting from bakeries and loud laughter ringing from buildings. Lin thinks about Kya at every hour of the day, missing her has never been easy to put away, set at a specific moment and forget about until then. Memories pop up randomly, demanding attention, just like Kya herself, but when Lin is hit by a flash of Kya asking for help braiding her hair, (her face peeling from a sunburn) or pulling an extra popsicle out from behind her back, (sticky fingers holding Lin's hand) of Kya bending rain away from them after getting caught in the middle of a downpour (Izumi's thirteenth birthday, them both in ornate dresses, Kya's makeup untouched by the surprising weather). All the good things, any flash of pleasure Lin encounters, are firmly Kya’s and Lin has started wondering if this feeling is ever planning to go away. 

The worst thing Kya’s done to her is leave, but unlike her mom, or Su, or even Tenzin, she comes back. Not for very long, never close to what Lin wants (what Lin would never ask for) but she does come back. She’ll show up, different hours of the day, never with much (or any) warning, but her hair is always full of light, her smile is always bright, and she’ll grab Lin’s hand the same way she’s been holding them together her whole life. 

That’s why Lin is here, backlit by the moon, (in a bed with a mattress that tilts so she has to fight gravity to avoid rolling into Kya) listening to soft breath that reminds her of falling asleep after swimming at fourteen, the salt still drying on her lips, and sleepovers at ten, when Izumi couldn’t stop accidentally setting things on fire and Kya happily soaked charred pillow after charred pillow because Lin kept having nightmares about smoke. 

Everything is different now, with Su halfway across the world, Bumi working all the time, Izumi helping to lead the entire Fire Nation, and Tenzin’s newfound ability to make everything awkward _all the time_ , but Lin thinks that Uncle Sokka might be making a trip up to visit soon, she only has six months of classes left before she can graduate and _really_ make her mom happy, and all she really wants right now is to run her fingers over the curve of Kya’s shoulder, down her arm, to explore the soft expanse of her stomach. (Lin only ever looks at people to assess danger, to identify weak spots, to fight, and this is deliciously different.) 

She can hear water lapping at the island’s shore (easy to guess why these rooms have always been Kya and Katara’s favorite part of the temple) and the soft breeze finally starts to sink into her body. (Some people have tense muscles, Lin’s pretty sure she has tense BONES.) She shuts her eyes and gives into gravity, sliding gently against Kya’s warmth. Kya sighs, immediately shifting so Lin can curl more comfortably against her, wrapping an arm around Lin’s hips. Lin would stiffen, should pull herself away, but _it’s been too long_ and she _missed Kya_. She’s _not_ that strong. Tomorrow she’ll have to awkwardly skirt around Tenzin in the kitchen, the day after she’ll pack up and go back to the Academy, collecting more bruises that Aunt Katara won’t be able to sweep away, but for now she leans back into the curtain of Kya’s hair, the familiarity of her breath, and shuts her eyes.


End file.
